Davide Sarchioni in conversation with Vincenzo Marsiglia

DS: With the development and diffusion of participatory digital technologies and, consequentially, social media networks, our method of communication has radically transformed, becoming faster, even instantaneous, bringing us “closer” geographically and culturally (you would think) and above all becoming more interactive. While “interactivity” is a term used in reference to information technology, “being interactive” describe an attitude not necessarily bound up with the world of social media, but rather a characteristic that qualifies and clarifies the intentions of your research, today as in the past. All your works are interactive, even those in which there is no trace of the use of technological devices. Within the ambit of this exhibition I’m thinking, for example, of the recent series “Shadows Stone”: intriguing fragments of alabaster, still partially untouched and with precious translucent effects that vary in relation to changing conditions of light and to the gaze of the human eye interacting with them.

VM: I’d agree. They’re fragments of white alabaster, part of an old find. They’re rare. The four-pointed star has been carved into the surface, identifying a hole that is the same for every piece and providing the coordinates for seeing beyond it, where another space is created. Other ways of interacting that have been explored recently also concern “Soft Star”. I’ve recently begun working on large four-pointed stars in textiles. A unique, unequivocal sign, but with a soft, attractive quality, something that can be handled and experienced by the spectator, physically and through the sense of touch. The star can be adapted to the space and moulds it, giving rise to new perspectives and visions if, for example, you install it midway between the wall and the floor.

DS: From the picture-cum-objects in felt, passing by way of the works on paper, the ceramics, the furnishings, the sculpture, through to the technological and digital works, the broad range of the experimentation, the results obtained, the techniques and the materials used have characterised research that “belongs to a single, compact, logical, and necessary stream. An inter-dependent whole composed of what has already been done and what he is still to do”, writes Matteo Galbiati, and it is animated by that particular approach – which you take – to creating interconnections with the material and with the physical and virtual space through the involvement and interaction of the spectator.

VM: Every one of the works I’ve created to date has always had a strong connection to the spectator and the site. I feel a need to create broader spaces of convergence, integrating the physical space with the virtual and amplifying the interaction with the user.

DS: Whether it is a physical or digital piece, not one of your works is ever conceived as a static presence, it is instead a dynamic device that, originating from the continual reprocessing of a unique but reiterated sign – the four-pointed star known as the Unita Marsiglia – that constructs new relationships both with space and with the spectator, formulating generative intertwinings and changeable codes, multiform and faceted paths towards an ever increasing visual and perceptive complexity.

VM: In the series “Modus” which I’m presenting in this exhibition, for example, the small surfaces in inclined glass are decorated with applications of dichroic film that reprises geometric motifs drawn from the four-pointed star which project coloured shadows onto the wall, defining the work between the physical-real dimension and the more ethereal-impalpable one created by light. The colours change in relation to the passage of the spectator who will note ever-changing chromatic variations as they move around the work. Their perceptive complexity, deriving from the infinite variations of sight, makes them extraordinary to my eyes.

DS: Right. In fact, in this series too, as in all your works in general, thanks to the interference/interaction of the spectator/user, the work is modified, transformed, and completed, but in ever different and subjective ways. As if each work could only “live” through the gaze of the spectator and in the time in which they observe it. It exists, it is there, concretely present, but it always appears to be elusive and in some way variable and multiform. This too is part of your research.

VM: My research is “kaleidoscopic” and “polyhedral”.

DS: I’m reminded of the “kaleidoscopic thinking” formulated by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative, according to whom the kaleidoscope “is a flexible set of elements: if you twist it or look at it from a different angle, you can see a different image or pattern. It is not reality that is fixed, but our view of reality. It is important to learn to see new possibilities”.Your work pertains to all this. Your research, after all, revolves around the same conceptual pivot, but it manifests through a variety of processes aiming at the continuous experimentation of different formulas. It allows us to explore the reality surrounding us from different angles and leads towards new possibilities. I’m thinking of the performances in mixed and augmented reality with HoloLens 2 and the “M (Star) the World” project. The beauty, the magnificence and the millennial history of Rome is reread through the movement of your gaze (and your body) which has generated mobile and minimal architecture between the Fori Imperiali and Piazza San Pietro. That gaze has covered and mapped every surface with a stellate pattern, presenting astonishing and brilliantly colour visions charged with energy and poetry in which an absolutely new and “unthinkable” dialogue between ancient and contemporary, between physical and digital reality is exalted, generating a surprising and destabilizing temporal and visual clash. “Map (Star) the World” in fact does not present an invented or imagined reality, but simply reality as it actually is: increasingly faceted, dazzling, augmented and aesthetically emphasised.

VM: The idea was born many years ago and was one that immediately caught my imagination because I wanted to create a relationship with reality and with the space in which it is found, having freedom of action. With the launch of HoloLens 2 my whole mixed reality world became possible, initially thanks to the invitation I received from Annalisa Ferraro to participate in a project she was curating at Rieti. Thanks to her I was able to concretize what had previously only existed on paper. Then came a broader and more complex project which I presented together with you and the Fondazione Luca e Katia Tomassini for the Maker Faire Rome in 2020, which is from where everything started. I was the first artist to use HoloLens 2 within an artistic context! I’d like to develop its potential to the utmost, perhaps with the collaboration of Microsoft, to be able to create connections with multiple people for a group experience and the creation of a neural network that could generate ever-more visual-sonic experiences. Moreover, “Map (Star) the World” is dedicated to the “rediscovery” of architectural beauty in Italy and around the world because I would like to map, to establish links with these wonder in order to provide new perspectives and interpretations. The process has been set in motion. Within this experience, the work is generated by the spectator and lives thanks to them. I feel a need for complete fusion. The idea is always associated with an interactive installation or performance that can give new life and a new appearance, physical as well as virtual, to the space, from the chromatic and geometric point of view. The work must make you think, reason, and generate questions about yourself and the experience it is enabling you to live. It must create a continuous dialogue.

DS: When the playwright Gian Maria Cervo asked me to select a visual artist to be involved in the new staging of “Freetime”, a piece conceived together with the brothers Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov through an experiment in collective and “polyphonic” writing, I immediately thought of you. Under the talented direction of Nicola Bremer, you managed to transform the stage of the Teatrul de Nord at Satu-Mare into a kaleidoscopic succession of portraits and stellate patters projected directly onto the sets and with which the actors interacted. Your work became an integral part of the piece, on an equal footing with the actors, following perfectly a text characterised by a sequence of apparently unrelated scenes to describe ever-changing parallel lives and identities. Working within the theatrical world, as well as being an important and gratifying experience for you, in both artistic and personal terms, allowed you to present the full breadth of your experience developed over many years of research and experimentation.

VM: It was an incredible experience! In the show I worked with multiple video projections, using three types of work: the videos and photos drawn from Hololens 2 for the mixed reality and the metaverse, in a kind of elegy to artificial intelligence, my application “Interactive Star App” used to generate stellate portraits of the actors; lastly, I also used one of my NFTs. The idea was therefore to train the spectator’s focus on both the theatrical action and the sets, which in the end were one and the same, generating a kind of “total work of art”.